Sometimes, working, I forget to eat. My friends don’t believe that you can forget to eat. They think if you don’t eat you get jittery and weak and blank in your brain – how can one work through that?

Then I remember that I used to be like that, too. To this day my family makes fun about the time I wanted to fast for a day, and broke the fast after three hours because I couldn’t go on – it felt as if I was falling apart.

The difference between being hungry and being in the grip of hypoglycemia lies in how healthy your metabolism is. When you are diabetic or prediabetic (and most Americans fall in either category), you are always looking for food. You cannot go without for any prolonged time. Most Americans, for that reason, do not only eat, but they snack in between. And, listen – I don’t blame them. Because if your metabolism is lousy (because of the Standard American Diet – or SAD) you NEED to eat frequent meals. Otherwise you fall apart. You feel you are hungry. In reality you are voracious because your cells are on a sugar rollercoaster.

This is how your metabolism – the sum of all the chemical and biochemical events in your body at any given time – functions if you eat SAD: You eat a load of sugar (white starches are chains of sugar molecules that are being digested within seconds of entering your mouth, filling you up with sugars, and more sugars). Your brain gets a nice sugar high. Insulin kicks in because high sugars are dangerous for your body (leading to blindness, impotence, heart disease, stroke, dementia, amputations, polyneuropathy, and so on). Since high sugars are so dangerous, your body shoots out much to much insulin. Next thing you know, your blood sugar is really low, and you feel lousy: weak, confused, shaky. What do you do? Well, you reach for another meal or a snack that starts the high-sugar/low-sugar cycle again. On the way, you gain weight because weight gain is the number one side-effect of insulin. And you go see-sawing through high and low blood sugars, never feeling top-fit and at your best potential.

What is the difference when your metabolism is healthy? You eat your three meals, and then you forget about it. You have energy to pursue what you love to do in life. And yes, sometimes you forget to eat because making music, or cleaning the yard, or making a scrapbook is so much fun.

What to eat to reach your perfect metabolism I have described in my diabetes book. But the main points are: Stop sugars and white starches (and don’t replace them with artificial sweeteners). Eat proteins and good fats in every single meal. Within a day or two, your body will experience the difference between hunger and hypoglycemia. When somebody around you says: “I am hungry,” I bet that in ninety percent they are talking the low-sugar jitters. Real hunger is different. Our ancient bodies are made to survive the normal periods of hunger and plenty of food. Our ancient bodies are not made to survive the overfeeding with sugars.

By the way, I didn’t say that you can just suppress that feeling of being “hungry” and ignore it. That is exactly the point: Hypoglycemia is a real condition, and really dangerous. Don’t try to starve when you come off a sugar high. Eat reasonably first. Then you can even put in a fasting day – as I can do now without difficulty. Or you can, once in a while, forget to eat altogether because you are so happily ensconced in a project that warms your heart.

In a country where the kitchens all look like out of the movies, and people read cookbooks like mysteries, few actually cook a warm meal every day, and some have not even the most basic of cooking skills. If you can’t cook but have resolved for the New Year to eat healthier - here is your mini-cooking course, easy as 1-2-3:

1. Vegetable: Go to the supermarket and look which vegetable is affordable, looks very fresh, and is organic (in that order!): Buy it.

What you need also for a vegetable dish: a mid-sized skillet with lid, olive oil, pepper and salt, dry minced or fresh garlic (if you have never cooked, take dry garlic – it is no fuss at all). Don’t opt for garlic already minced/peeled in a jar – it spoils fast.

Say you bought kale. Cut in broad stripes, wash it fast, put in skillet. Add about a finger or two deep water, olive oil, pepper, salt, garlic. Bring to a boil, then simmer on low, until the kale starts looking like wilting – takes about 30 to 45 minutes.

Eat and enjoy! If you really can’t cook, making a beginning with a single vegetable dish and experiencing the different flavors, will get you hooked. Nearly all vegetables are good with garlic and olive oil. In the future, I will post some more very easy recipes.

After you have tried several different vegetables, you graduate to fish and/or meat.

2. Fish or meat: Buy a filet of fish (about half a pound per person) that looks fresh or a small piece of meat for pan-frying, for instance: a lamb chop, a thin pork cutlet, some sirloin stripes.

What you need for fish/meat: A small frying pan with lid, some fresh or dried herbs (like dill for fish, oregano for meat), coconut oil, pepper and salt.

Say you bought a piece of hake: Melt a teaspoon of coconut oil in the frying pan. Wash the fish, dry it with a paper towel, put it into the pan. Cover it with dill that you have finely chopped, or with dry dill (don’t be a miser!). Heat until you hear it sizzling, then turn to low heat, and let simmer for about ten to twenty minutes, depending on the size of the piece of fish. It should easily break apart when you probe with a fork.

In fish and meat, salt should always be added AFTER cooking. Pepper can go in whenever you want it.

Frying meat is a bit more tricky – do you like your meat more raw or more done? Usually, when blood seeps up to the surface, it is time to turn the meat and fry from the other side.

Don’t be afraid of frying! Coconut oil can stand heating better than olive oil. And what kills us in the Standard American Diet (SAD) is not this little bit of meat but sugars (especially High Fructose Corn Syrup ((HFCS)), white starches, dairy (especially cheese) and hardened fats (which are used in processed foods to increase shelf-life).

3. Ready for a side dish? They are easiest! Rice and lentil leftovers also make a wonderful breakfast the next day. For breakfast, warm the grains/legumes amd add some olive oil – that way you get hungrier later. A handful fresh (or dried) herbs makes it a rounded breakfast.

Grains/legumes: You need a small skillet with lid. You also need brown rice or dry lentils, and salt.

Say you bought small green lentils (also called French lentils, Champagne lentils). Take one cup of dry lentils and add two cups of water. Plus a pinch of salt. Here I publicly admit to that I never wash lentils and rice. It might be better – but then the ratio of water is not that simple 1 to 2. So I don’t wash - I seem to be less worried by germs and crud than other people; a certain amount might even strengthen our immune system. Bring to a boil, then put the lid on and simmer on low, until all water is gone. For French lentils it takes roughly 45 minutes.

Red lentils (same recipe, same grain/water ratio) cook must faster – they are done in about twenty minutes. I always add cumin to red lentils, for a great taste.

“Normal” lentils, the plain old variety, cook the same. Only they taste a bit boring. To vamp them up, add a small onion and/or a carrot, or both, finely chopped. The cooking time for normal lentils is somewhere between green and red lentils. You don’t have to worry about cooking times: Grains and legumes are always done when the water is gone.

Now you can make a whole meal! Everything else will be just variations on the themes.

P.S. If you live in the Boston area, and like to hear me speak, see the calendar on "events" for a January 30th event.

Years ago, I found myself in a hotel at the Dead Sea in Israel. The hotel also catered to patients, because it has been shown that sunlight and saltwater improves such conditions as eczema and psoriasis.

The hotel had an excellent buffet with all kinds of healthy vegetables and gorgeous fruit. For me most striking observation was that the patient group flocked around cheese, cakes, cookies, pizza, lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, and bacon, whereas the other travelers delved into the abundance of fresh foods. In addition, the patient group was visibly more overweight than the others. I had a hard time not pointing out to every patient the damage they were doing to their bodies just as they were seeking the healing waters of the Dead Sea.

You go online for eczema remedies, and you find a thousand products screaming “Here! Buy me!”

This is my simple advice:

1. Get rid of anything you might be allergic to. – Some researchers deny that allergies play a role – I don’t agree with them; but let’s not call it allergies then, but food intolerances. Because in many cases, food intolerance plays a role in psoriasis and eczema – and the Standard American Diet (SAD) is especially at fault. The offending foods? The list I gathered from my patients is long, and dairy for sure tops it. Citrus fruit, wheat (and, by association, barley, rye, oats), soy, nuts have been most often the culprits in my patients. Coffee (including caffeinated) seems to trigger eczema too.

2. Use coconut oil on the affected, itchy, thickened skin. Coconut oil is anti-bacterial, soothes the itch and helps the poor skin to heal.

3. If you can afford, vacation at the ocean. Moderate sunlight and saltwater do miracles for posriasis and eczema.

4. If you want to go the extra mile, get a good probiotic (bacteria that are helpful for bowel health – but not frpm yogurt, take capsules) to heal your gut, and take fish oil capsules against inflammation.

Often this works also for rheumatoid arthritis and other auto-immune diseases, too. An additional biggie in psoriasis is alcohol – avoid it.

Some other ideas why people now get eczema are that babies are brought up in a too clean environment, and that emotional issues play a role. The first we can’t do anything about once you are grown-up. The emotional issue – well, we all still struggle to grow up, don’t we? Can’t hurt to work on that.

In Natural Medicine, we work with the four elimination organs: kidneys, bowels, lungs and skin. If one is blocked or diseased, the body as a whole suffers.

With the Standard American Diet (SAD), foremost our bowels are ailing. We live in a state of constant intestinal inflammation – and from there the infliction moves to skin (pimples, psoriasis), brain (depression, stroke, dementia), joints (arthritis), heart (heart attack, clogging of arteries. The two diseases that are “systemic”, namely affecting about every single organ in the body, are diabetes and obesity – and they are linked, as we know.

It is not difficult to conclude that the only remedy that will work, is cleaning up our act of how we eat – but for some people, this seems extremely hard. While there a several reasons to collude in making us overeat like advertisements, genetics, boredom, frustration, depression – the biggest reason is addiction. If one does not understand that food can be addictive, one cannot learn to avoid the offending foods like the pest.

Two of the main food culprits – I have mentioned them before – are gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats) and casein (dairy). Interestingly, they are chemically related. Interestingly, both are broken down into opioids – compounds that make you feel good and make you crave more.

To improve bowel health, we have to eat better – and the better eating mostly consists of vegetables, vegetables, vegetables (see, how I am repeating myself). Bitters help better digestion.

Aside from improved nutrition, a daily probiotic may be your best bet for bowel health. Probiotics are healthy bowel bacteria. Probiotics are live microorganisms – bowel bacteria – that belong in your intestines, but are not there because they have been killed off by antibiotic use (which you might have ingested without knowing with animal products) and/or poor diets.

These are the benefits which you might gain from a healthy gut flora: Reduced inflammation across the board, enhanced resistance to all kinds of infections like diarrhea, urinary tract and Helicobacter pylorus infections, increased mineral and vitamin absorption, protection against colon cancer, lowering of blood pressure and cholesterol – to name a few.

Probiotics are not for very small children (before their first birthday) or for patients with acute pancreatitis. Initially, probiotics might cause mighty rumbling in your bowels – so start low, with one capsule/pill per day, and slowly work your way up. If one brand does give you indigestion, try another one. And the more you can down (and afford), probably the better; think about reforesting: taking one capsule can be likened to planting a single tree.

We know that probiotics work – but we don’t know how. One study seemed to suggest that it does not matter whether the bacteria are alive or dead – they worked anyway. And they don’t seem to have lasting effects – only as long as one takes them.

But if you take a single natural supplement, forget multivitamins – take a probiotic!

Under-cover, in America’s shoes, nail fungus is attacking like body-snatchers. To call it “athlete’s foot” is giving nail fungus a too-nice name. Think about the germs invading a body after death; nail fungus is invading your body already before death!

Conventional wisdom has it that we get the fungus because we catch it from public spaces like pools and hotel rooms. Truth is, the offending fungus spores – most often those of Trichophyton rubrum - are everywhere and hard to avoid. Still, nail fungus was uncommon only a few generations earlier. We pick up the offenders because our body defenses are down. Down from a diet high in sugar. Note that the acronym for American Standard Diet is SAD!

Nail fungus likes it dark, warm, moist and sweet. Therefore, let’s spoil it for the invaders and make it bright, cool, dry and decidedly unsweet! Wear light, airy shoes. Go barefoot often. If you have to wear heavy boots or sneakers, use ample baby powder, and change shoes and socks often. You can microwave your shoes after wearing (one minute on high) – but only if there are no metal buckles on them. And you want to try out with less than a minute because some modern materials melt and blister. Alternatively, dust your shoes with foot powder right after slipping out of them. Walk barefoot at home or wear slip-resistant socks.

There are many natural methods to fight nail fungus, usually involving the one or other essential oil and/or garlic. This is what is highly effective (unless you have an allergy to any of the ingredients):

Rub feet and nails twice a day with tea tree oil. Since tea tree oil tends to dry out the skin, apply olive oil (perhaps with a drop of thyme or rosemary oil) afterward to keep the skin nice and smooth. Repeat religiously twice a day until all signs of fungus is gone; then continue once daily for prevention.

And the unsweet part? Whenever you eat something sugary, your nail fungus thrives. Don’t feed the invader! Build a shield around you – by a diet high in vegetables!

The above applies also to another fungal disease: Jock itch. It is only so much harder to air the area out...